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Albert Camus

Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.

Friday, October 10, 2014

Guest Post and Giveaway: Rebel series by Lance Erlick

Description:

Action packed first book in Rebel series.

Annabelle (16) faces adult dilemmas and a fight for her life. Orphaned at age three when the military took her parents, she’s a tomboy who rebels against her conformist society, which pushes her to become a cop intern to catch escaped boys. Then she’s forced to choose between joining the elite military that took her parents or being torn from her beloved sister and adoptive mom.

The Rebel Within turns our male dominated world upside down. After the Second American Civil War, the Federal Union pursues a utopian society without men by rounding up the remaining males, and enforcing Harmony. Central to their plan is EggFusion Fertilization and Female Mechanized Warriors.

In this world, Annabelle faces a cop intern boss who hates her, a military commander who demands too much, and an amazon bully who won’t leave her alone. She meets a handsome boy who escapes prison. As she tries to survive rigorous military training and hunt for her imprisoned birth mother, Annabelle must choose between capturing the boy and helping him escape, while she wrestles with the consequences of her actions.

The Rebel Trap sweeps readers into a haunting world with no privacy. Written as a standalone story, it also follows Annabelle’s adventures from The Rebel Within.

Auditory implants and contact cams allow her military commander from the unit that took her parents to watch her 24-7. A boy she helped to escape hacks her implants to plead for her help. She’s forced to be a cop and military spy investigating her police captain as well as capturing escaped boys. Observed constantly, Annabelle has to dance between helping the escaped boy she likes free his brother from a heavily guarded geek institute, her job to capture him, and the feud between her military commander and the police chief she’s expected to spy on.

A pawn in a bigger game, no one believes she can handle this, which may be her greatest asset.

Rebels Divided is a fun thrill ride written as a standalone action story, but also part of the Rebel series, three years later.

The first time Geo sees Annabelle, they meet as enemies and she doesn’t kill him. That’s worth something. Geo (19) is a rugged frontiersman who hungers to see more of the world than the impoverished Outland glen where he and his pa hide from local Rangers. Annabelle (19) is a tough yet fragile tomboy who lost her parents at age three to the Mech Warriors. Then she’s forced to become a Mech.

After the Second American Civil War, the nation divides into two ‘utopias’. The Federal Union enforces Harmony and an all-female society protected by Mechanized Warriors. The Outland promotes rugged individualism, but Thane Edwards holds a monopoly of power with his Rangers. The Union’s Tenn-tucky governor and the Outland warlord conclude a secret deal, pledging Annabelle to the warlord to provide heirs, and putting a bounty on Geo and his pa.

Hunted by military from both sides, Geo and Annabelle struggle to overcome mutual distrust in order to work together to rescue her sister and gain justice for the murder of his father.

GUEST POST

YOUNG ADULT FICTION

I’ve been asked to write about how you capture young adult readers’ attention. I’ll have to confess I didn’t set out to write young adult fiction.

When I began writing the Rebel series, I had in mind a world in which extremists divided the country. I also had read some interesting fertility research that hinted at the possibility of two women having a child together. Adding the two ideas brought about a dystopian world in which one side was female-dominated and the other a rough-and-tumble male-dominated wilderness. Into that world, I wondered who would be the most interesting characters. I didn’t want to make it about the politicians, but about who has the most at stake, the young. The main characters of that story were nineteen, Annabelle from the Federal Union and Geo from the Outlands. While that was the first written, Rebels Divided is now the third book in the series.

Annabelle had been a fascinating character to write. She kept rattling about in my head begging me to write her story, since she had shared the spotlight in Rebels Divided with Geo. She practically narrated The Rebel Within to me, often at three in the morning. When readers read Annabelle’s story, they told me not only how much they loved the character, but that I’d written young adult fiction.

When readers asked for what happened after this novel, Annabelle bugged me to write a sequel and voila, The Rebel Trap.

Thus, I had no pretentions about writing to a particular audience, merely telling the story as it came to me. I hope readers enjoy reading about Annabelle as much as I enjoyed writing her.

Lance Erlick grew up in various parts of the United States and Europe. He took to stories as his anchor and was inspired by his father’s engineering work on cutting-edge aerospace projects to look to the future. He studied creative writing at Northwestern University and University of Iowa.

He writes science fiction, dystopian and young adult stories and likes to explore the future implications of social and technological trends. He is the author of The Rebel Within, The Rebel Trap, and Rebels Divided, three books in the Rebel series. In those stories, he flips traditional exploitation to explore the effects of a world that discriminates against males and the consequences of following conscience for those coming of age. Erlick lives in the Chicago area with his family.